Joanne Vincett

Joanne Vincett is affiliated with The Open University's Department of People and Organisations. Joanne previously was the Associate Director for the social enterprise sector and international lead for the Career Development Office at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College in the US. She also was an Adjunct Professor at Granite State College and taught a Business Management course ‘Effecting Positive Change in Organizations’.

Prior to academia, Joanne started in the graphic arts paper manufacturing industry in corporate sales and marketing. After 5 years, she changed her focus to social enterprises and worked for the US Peace Corps in the Eastern Caribbean as a Small Business Development Trainer and Counsellor for a rural agricultural development NGO and was the elected Lead Volunteer for a group of 19 Peace Corps Volunteers.

She holds an MRes from The Open University, an International MBA from Escuela de Alta Dirección y Administración (EADA) in Barcelona, Spain, and BSc in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She completed an apprenticeship with the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, and Vienna, Austria. She holds a Professional Coaching Certification and also created the Professional Coaching Portal for the non-profit organization MERLOT (Multimedia Educational Resource for Learning and Online Teaching).

Her current research is an organizational ethnography of Yarl's Wood Befrienders, a voluntary organization that visits women detained in Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre in the UK. She is a full member of the organization she is studying, as a volunteer, befriender to detainees and a trustee on the Board of Directors. This study furthers our knowledge of compassionate practices and emotion management in volunteer work, compassionate organizations and the voluntary sector support for immigration detainees, a marginalised and vulnerable group in society.